Rubbin’ is Racin’: Late Wednesday evening I mentioned to my friend TormentX that we needed to have a Nascar racing night. A night where we would purchase a stock car body from the store in Forza Motorsport 3 and then purchase somebody’s design from the game’s Storefront. Torment did one better and suggested that we design our own Nascar-themed paint-jobs and bring them to the race. I thought that was an excellent idea, so the race was on!

We went on to spend the next couple of hours designing our own cars. My design can be seen above and is also currently available through my in-game Storefront. So after the designs were done myself and three friends took to the game’s ovals to attempt to recreate the Stock Car experience. To make it in some ways more authentic and in others more forgiving I forced the view to in-car only, but left the damage as cosmetic.

The races were what you would expect, left turns, drafting, a little bit of paint traded, but all in all it was a lot of fun! What is cool about Forza Motorsport 3 is that the game is very flexible, especially in the multiplayer department. There you can create your own fun my making races with rules that don’t just end with the fastest lap times. Feeling creative? Well you can paint your car, take photos, or make videos that detail your experience. I am hoping to once again have a Nascar Knight, and next time I hope to have a full field of competitors. Do you have what it takes?

Blur Beta Impressions: Speaking of full fields, Blur is at its best when a full field of twenty (that is right, TWENTY) cars take to the track where rubbin’ is not only racin’, it is a necessity! I didn’t mean to jump into an impression without a more sound lead up, but that full-field transition was just to perfect.

Blur for me started as a bit of a slow burn. My initial impressions were not the most favourable. Coming from Bizarre Creations most recent racers, Project Gotham Racing 3 and 4, I had more of an expectation regarding the cars handling in the game. But once I started to earn better cars and get my head wrapped around the ‘Kart-Racing’ mentality things started to come around for me.

Yesterday I had my most extensive runs with the beta and was very pleased with how things went. What is tough that early on you may have the underpowered cars that make the experience fairly rocky, but as you build in-game ‘fans’ you will unlock better cars and mods that allow you to compete or excel (it is up to you). But even in losing the game can be wildly fun. As I mentioned earlier, a field of 20 cars all frenzied for crumpled metal creates a gaming atmosphere quite like no other.

So my advice for you regarding this beta if you find yourself with an opportunity to play it, give it some time, level-up, and if possible, gather some friends up to play. The beta has literally taken me from curious about, to not buying, to must buy. While the visuals are not stunning, the player count is, that with twitter intigration it looks like Bizarre Creations may have their grove back!

That is all for this edition of Rolling Start. Hope to see you on the track or in the comments section. Until next time, don’t let off the accelerator!